51吃瓜

To residents of Memphis鈥檚 resource-poor, predominantly non-white neighborhoods, the were easy to spot. The plainclothes patrols were known for driving their unmarked Dodge Chargers through the streets, often all too recklessly, sowing fear as they went, spitting venom from their windows, with guns drawn at the slightest sign of an infraction.

On the night of January 7th, was two minutes from home when members of that squad pulled him over. Probable cause: reckless driving (if you believe the official story). , all of them trained use-of-force specialists, proceeded to take turns hitting him with everything they had, including boots, fists, and telescopic batons.

The died three days later. Cause of death? 鈥淓xcessive bleeding due to severe beating.鈥� A body-cam snuff film of sorts was later released, showing some of Nichols鈥檚 last moments. The speak for themselves.

Officer to Tyre:

鈥淵ou鈥檙e gonna get your ass blown the fuck up. Oh, I鈥檓 gonna knock your ass the fuck out!鈥�

Tyre to officers:

鈥淥K. You guys are really doing a lot right now鈥︹��

鈥� 鈥淟ay down!鈥�

鈥� 鈥淪top! I鈥檓 just trying to go home.鈥�

鈥� 鈥淪pray him! Spray him!鈥�

鈥� 鈥淪top! I鈥檓 not doing anything.鈥�

鈥� 鈥淭ase him! Tase him!鈥�

Tyre cries out:

鈥淢om! Mom!鈥�

Officer to Tyre:

鈥淲atch out! I鈥檓 gonna baton the fuck out of you!鈥�

鈥� 鈥淒ude, hit him!鈥�

鈥� 鈥淗it him!鈥�

鈥� 鈥淗it him!鈥�

鈥� 鈥淢辞尘鈥︹赌�

Plainclothes Paramilitaries

Welcome to America鈥檚 emerging predator state.

Memphis is anything but an outlier. There are thousands of 鈥渆lite鈥� teams like that city鈥檚 Scorpion unit and they come in all calibers, shapes, and sizes. They range from specially trained teams in police departments to sprawling 鈥渁nti-crime鈥� squads in big cities like and , not to mention federal tactical units like the Border Patrol鈥檚 and counter-terrorism task forces like the one that in Georgia last month.

Beyond the , such specialized units tend to share some other characteristics. In their warlike tactics, their strategic outlook, and their often-violent subculture 鈥� if not always in their uniforms 鈥� they are virtually indistinguishable from their counterparts in the military. In their 鈥渨ars鈥� on crime, drugs, and terror, they work with a similar imported from U.S. combat missions overseas but seemingly stripped of any reference to the .

They conduct themselves, in other words, as plainclothes paramilitaries in America鈥檚 urban war zones (or what they like to call 鈥溾��). Like , they are regularly charged with the execution of 鈥渢ime-sensitive,鈥� 鈥渃landestine,鈥� and often 鈥渦nilateral鈥� missions 鈥� with or without the support of the local population 鈥� using 鈥渁ssurance, deterrence, and coercion鈥� to fight the enemies of the state and exert control over 鈥渉ostile, denied, or politically sensitive environments.鈥�

What鈥檚 more, these units operate with a legal guarantee of 鈥溾�� for violence against civilians. In other words, despite the recent Memphis exception, they normally have when it comes to violent offenses which, had they been committed in another country, might be classified as war crimes, crimes of aggression, or even crimes against humanity.

For offenses of this nature, the United States is itself an international hot spot. In the course of a given year, according to one recent , our law enforcement agencies were responsible for 13% of all fatalities caused by the police globally, even though Americans make up just 4% of the world鈥檚 population. And as investigative journalism has , specialized units like the Scorpions are responsible for a wildly disproportionate share of those deaths.

Take the New York City Police Department. Since 2000, its own show that nearly one in three police killings have been by non-uniformed officers, especially with paramilitary training and a long-standing for terrorizing communities of color.

Nearly a decade before the slaying of Tyre Nichols, there was, for instance, the murder of , a 43-year-old street vendor, 鈥渘eighborhood peacekeeper,鈥� and father of six. His life was snuffed out thanks to a after he was stopped for selling 鈥渓oosies,鈥� unlicensed cigarettes, on a Staten Island street corner in the summer of 2014. (In the end, the to serve jail time in Garner鈥檚 death was the young filmmaker of color who had the courage to record the encounter.)

Like the officers in the South Bronx who gunned down outside his home as he reached for his wallet, the ones in Queens who sprayed with 50 bullets on his wedding day, and the ones in Brooklyn who opened fire on a mentally ill man named in 2018, those responsible for Garner鈥檚 murder were members of the infamous 鈥渁nti-crime鈥� units whose work would become a blueprint for Scorpion-style policing.

The force鈥檚 predatory philosophy is often summed up in a single sentence lifted from Ernest Hemingway鈥檚 1936 (satirical) short story, 鈥淥n the Blue Water.鈥� Officers of the peace have been known to quote it, to , and to of their precincts: 鈥淭here is no hunting like the hunting of man, and those who have hunted armed men long enough and liked it, never care for anything else thereafter.鈥�

In the words of one New Yorker, a nurse from Crown Heights who witnessed the killing of Vassell, 鈥淭he undercovers think they have the authority to do anything they want. They hunt [people] 鈥� like us black people 鈥� down鈥� They act tough鈥� like they鈥檙e from a gang. But they鈥檙e only like that because they have a badge.鈥�

A History of Violence Against Women

In December 2019, the city of Louisville, Kentucky, rolled out of the Scorpion unit. It was labeled the Place-Based Investigations Squad (PBI) and put under the aegis of its police department鈥檚 Criminal Interdiction Division.

Following with 鈥減roblem-oriented鈥� academics and police executives from other cities, the Louisville Metropolitan department implemented a then-little-known practice called 鈥淧lace-Based Investigations of Violent Offender Territories,鈥� or . In the end, this would prove but a variation on an already all-too-familiar theme of hot-spot policing first pioneered by 鈥減olice scientists鈥� in some 30 years before George Floyd鈥檚 murder. (In fact, the use of the term 鈥渉ot spots鈥� can be traced back to the early years of .)

Under this model, police assets were to be specially directed toward a handful of hot spots or 鈥� urban locations.鈥� That such places were home to populations of disproportionately Black, Indigenous, and immigrant Americans will no longer shock anyone; nor that they overlapped strikingly with areas of concentrated impoverishment and 鈥溾��; nor that an influx of heavily armed strangers was undoubtedly the last thing such communities needed from the government. All of this was beside the point. The 鈥溾�� 鈥� the minimal difference such hot-spot policing purportedly made in the calculations of would-be criminals 鈥� was enough to keep most critics quiet.

Three months after the rollout, the Place-Based Investigations Squad would play an integral part in the police raid that took the life of , a 26-year-old Black woman and emergency-room technician at the University of Louisville, accused of no crime, but executed anyway by three Louisville police officers standing in the hallway of her own home. from the PBI Squad had requested and obtained five search warrants with 鈥渘o-knock鈥� clauses, including one for Ms. Taylor, acting on what one would later call a 鈥済ut feeling.鈥�

Within moments of the officers鈥� arrival at her apartment on the night of March 13, 2020, Breonna Taylor lay dying, felled by six of 32 shots fired into her home. It would be before she even received medical attention 鈥� 15 minutes too late to save her life. Although four officers have now been for civil rights violations, and three stand accused of lying on the affidavit they used to secure the warrants, a grand jury ultimately failed to return a single indictment for the officers who opened fire.

That night in 2020, Ms. Taylor joined a of Black women, robbed of their lives while simply trying to live them by those supposedly tasked with their protection. According to the , some 280 women have been slain in encounters with law enforcement over just the past five years. have found that women made up nearly half of all police-initiated contacts and Black women were three times more likely than white ones to experience the use of force during a police-initiated stop.

鈥淓lite鈥� police units have played an outsized role in such state-sanctioned femicides.

Take the case of , 27, a Navy vet killed by a tactical team in Virginia Beach in 2015, as she sat in her car with her four-month-old baby in the back. Or consider Atlanta鈥檚 (short for 鈥淩un Every Drug Dealer Out of Georgia鈥�) Unit. On November 21, 2006, plainclothes officers from that narcotics squad 鈥� having lied under oath to obtain a no-knock warrant 鈥� barged into the home of , a 92-year-old grandmother, and promptly . Drugs were then near her body in a sorry attempt at a cover-up.

Disbanded or Rebranded?

We鈥檝e been here before: Officers are charged with second-degree murder. Sweeping reforms are promised. Controversial units are 鈥渄eactivated,鈥� their officers reassigned to other bureaus.

We saw this with the Amadou Diallo protests and the New York Police Department鈥檚 in the early 2000s. We saw it with Atlanta鈥檚 after the killing of Kathryn Johnston. We saw it with Louisville鈥檚 in the months following the murder of Breonna Taylor 鈥� and we鈥檙e seeing it now in the aftermath of the assault on Tyre Nichols.

Count on this, however: as time passes and attention subsides, reforms are abandoned, charges are dropped, or the defendants found not guilty by juries of their peers. And special ops teams are rebranded and brought back to life under different names.

Today, Atlanta鈥檚 鈥溾�� have replaced the 鈥淩ED DOGs鈥� of old, while the very police executive who ran the old unit, , was made commissioner of the Memphis police department. The city of Memphis has also sought guidance from , who was New York police commissioner during a particularly trigger-happy period in that department鈥檚 history (including the deaths of Sean Bell, Ousmane Zongo, Timothy Stansbury, Ramarley Graham, and Kimani Gray).

Meanwhile, New York City Mayor , himself a veteran of a plainclothes police unit, is touting his 鈥溾�� (along with another elite strike force inherited from his predecessors, the 鈥溾��) as the basis for a whole new approach to policing. In truth, they are simply picking up where the Street Crimes Unit left off. The only real differences: longer guns, modified uniforms, and body cameras that can be turned on or off at will.

The names change, but the strategy (such as it is) remains the same and the body counts only climb higher.

鈥淐ollateral Damage鈥� and the War at Home

Yet such police killings are not truly local matters. The final piece of the puzzle is the national security state, itself a predatory entity and the source of much of the surplus that supplies the police with significant military-grade weaponry and the bipartisan consensus that keeps the dollars flowing.

Local police agencies would not have anything like the they have today 鈥� ones that would be the envy of many of the world鈥檚 militaries 鈥� without the largesse of the Pentagon鈥檚 popular . For years, it has been arming police departments around the country in a distinctly military fashion, sometimes even with weapons directly off the battlefields of this country鈥檚 distant wars. Thanks to that program, the Memphis police department has managed to obtain a significant stockpile of high-powered rifles and multiple armored personnel carriers, while the State of Tennessee alone has received worth of weaponry from the Department of Defense.

Meanwhile, paving new ground, the Special Operations Bureau of the San Francisco Police Department has procured unmanned, remotely piloted with names like TALON and DRAGON RUNNER. It is now its intent to use them as a 鈥渄eadly force option鈥� in criminal apprehensions and other incidents like 鈥渞iots, insurrection, or potentially violent demonstrations.鈥�

None of this would be possible without the support of politicians from both parties. The agreed upon by both parties, for instance, promises $37 billion in new spending on law enforcement 鈥� with double-digit percentage increases in discretionary funding for local police departments, above and beyond the nearly $1 trillion for the Departments of and . As a 鈥渕oral statement,鈥� that document bears a striking resemblance to its predecessors, backing the blue with billions of public tax dollars, while bearing witness to the priorities of a government on the warpath against enemies domestic and foreign.

Zooming out, we can see this kind of predatory policing for the national crisis it really is.

In recent decades, according to a definitive published in the British medical journal The Lancet, more than 30,000 American civilians have lost their lives in encounters with law enforcement, a figure perhaps best compared to the rates of 鈥渃ollateral damage鈥� in war-torn places like , , , or . And whatever we call them, 鈥渆lite鈥� units like the Scorpions have played a leading role in that carnage. From their to their advanced technology and heavy weaponry, they are increasingly cast as the protagonists in what has become America鈥檚 homeland theater of war, producing content of spectacular violence as this country鈥檚 war machine turns inward.

At a time when significant can be seen between law enforcement and the white nationalist militia movement, it should be obvious that police departments are, among other things, playing a dangerous game with democracy. With Donald Trump and his crew still going full Blue Lives Matter and the Biden administration to pass meaningful police reform, count on another bloody harvest of in 2023 and 2024. In the event of sustained civil conflict, there is little mystery about which side some elite police units would choose to fight on or who would find themselves in the scopes of their semi-automatic rifles.

Still, the predator state is not invincible, nor is its ascendancy inevitable. After all, the claims of police departments to legitimacy rest upon the support of elected officials who remain vulnerable to popular pressure, while the very existence of such paramilitary units depends on their access to the public purse. In a very real sense, then, they can still be fired, or at least defunded.

For now, in the absence of consequences, the hunt for humans goes on uninterrupted and that鈥檚 likely to continue as long as so many Americans remain willing to put up with it.

[ first published this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author鈥檚 own and do not necessarily reflect 51吃瓜鈥檚 editorial policy.